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Steve Arora, Swiss Re: Drones are more of an asset than a liability

17 Oct 2016

Steve Arora, Head Casualty Underwriting Reinsurance, Member of Reinsurance Executive Committee, Swiss Re, gave the closing speech at the 'Insurance in the age of drones' conference at the Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue. The event brought drone experts, drone racers, regulators, lawyers, and a hacker together with Swiss Re clients, to examine how drone technology will impact casualty and aviation insurance in the near and long term.

"Drones are one of the emerging classes or the emerging risks that we have in the insurance industry overall. That could be for the aviation space, but also when you think of liability as a product. People tend to think about the emerging risk or the risk pool, but I think we need to look at this from another angle, which is an industry we want to make the society more resilient. Think about the role that drones can play in terms of the benefit to that value proposition rather than just the pure technical underwriting risks. Drones can enter hazardous areas much more effectively, survey lands that we have never seen before. I think overall, it’s going to be much more of an asset than the liability side that we traditionally think of.

I think as underwriters, we like to evaluate risk and drones will become a big risk pool in the future. I think everything is still evolving, so yes, originally we asked a lot of questions about what does this mean for this industry? I also think let’s complement this view with how it can actually help us as an industry make society much more resilient - and I think it can.

It’s always nice to have fun in our industry, but what I would say is, Swiss Re - we consider ourselves a risk knowledge company. This is just an example where we can bring clients and we can have a forum. We don't have all the answers, but we learn together, we become smarter together, and this is an example where I think this is not a commodity insurance type of situation. It’s somewhere where a reinsurer can really add value to the market."